Process Plant machinery manufacturing and exporting companies in the country have written to the Union Commerce and industries Minister Mr Anand Sharma have expressed shock and serious concern at frequent Anti Dumping investigations initiated by Ministry of Commerce against imports of stainless steel sheets and coils in the country.
Mr VP Ramachandran secretary of Process Plant and Machinery Association of India said “The Commerce Ministry has started Anti Dumping investigation and mid term reviews based on misleading facts submitted by a large family owned domestic manufacturer namely Jindal Stainless Limited without discussing the matter with the end users and fabricators in the critical segment oil and gas, desalination, process plant and heavy equipment manufacturing, Nuclear power, Railways, Automotive, infrastructure building and petrochemical industry..”
Mr Ramachandran said “For our critical industry manufacturing and supplying plant and machinery to high end industries in India and abroad specific required dimensions of above 1250mm width in all grades of stainless steel are required for design safety, quality of the equipments. These dimensions are not available in the domestic market nor manufactured by the complainant JSL. The manufacturer and end users have been sourcing these wide stainless steel Hot and cold rolled products from global manufacturers including Outokumpu, ArcelorMittal and Acerinox since many years.”
He added that “The scope of HR products put under investigation by the Ministry of Commerce include products above 1250mm width which are presently not manufactured by sole petitioner Jindal Stainless Ltd as it has manufacturing capacity up to width of 1250mm and cannot offer widths beyond 1250mm in HR under any conditions. It is technically impossible for them to manufacture higher widths and the same has been verified and notified by the Ministry of Commerce in the stainless steel CR case notification released in November 2009.”
He said “We have requested request that the products which are beyond 1250mm in width should not be included in the investigations as these products are not being manufactured by complainant and do not affect the domestic manufacturer . Furthermore, within three months of anti dumping notification on cold rolled stainless steel sheets and coils by the government, there is a mid term review initiated by DGAD again on the behest of Jindals based on illogical submission by Jindals.”
He added that “The 1250mm width material has an International Standard tolerance levels of maximum 6mm but Jindals are advising and misleading DGAD to impose 50mm as the tolerance to suffocate the end user export led industry. This 50mm tolerance may be a local Jindal Haryana standard but surely not an international standard and we wonder what DGAD is trying to do by initiating such reviews which will kill the business rhythm of the thousands of end users in SME segment and will only protect the interests of Jindals.”
The Ministry of Commerce has recently initiated investigations against import of hot rolled sheets and coils in grade 304 as well as started a new mid term review on cold rolled products originating from European Union, South Korea, Taiwan, USA, China and South Africa on the basis of misleading information at the behest of single domestic stainless steel Manufacturer Jindal Stainless Limited.
